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The prosaic purpose of a license plate is to identify the vehicle and the state in which it was registered. But some states offer — for an extra fee — specialty license plates that allow the owner of a car or truck to incorporate his or her favorite cause in the design of the plate, with proceeds sometimes going to a charity associated with that cause. Many of these causes are uncontroversial, but not all. On Monday, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the state of Texas' refusal to issue a specialty plate to the Sons of Confederate Veterans because it would feature the group's logo, which includes the Confederate Battle Flag. Many people see the flag as an...

Related "Ruth Bader Ginsburg" Articles

The prosaic purpose of a license plate is to identify the vehicle and the state in which it was registered. But some states offer — for an extra fee — specialty license plates that allow the owner of a car or truck to incorporate his or her favorite cause...

In Boalt Hall's faculty lounge the other day, UC Berkeley Law professor Melissa Murray was telling me about some of the cases she and her colleague Kristin Luker included in their groundbreaking legal casebook about reproductive justice.
Of course the...

The Supreme Court narrowed the definition of obstruction of justice under the so-called Enron law and did so Wednesday by freeing a Florida fishing boat captain from charges that he secretly tossed overboard dozens of undersized red grouper to avoid...

In an ideal America, it might be appropriate for the law to concern itself only with racial discrimination that is overt, conscious and deliberate. In the real America of entrenched racial inequality, Congress and the courts rightly have recognized that...

In a clash between the 1st Amendment and judicial ethics code, the Supreme Court debated Tuesday whether to free elected judges to personally ask for campaign contributions from voters, including lawyers and others who might one day find themselves in...

Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission turns 5 this month, but the damage from the Supreme Court's revolutionary ruling on campaign finance is just beginning to be felt.
Scholars and pundits will undoubtedly mark the anniversary with...

Justice Samuel A. Alito's sister is a high-powered labor attorney who represents management in disputes with workers. Justice Elena Kagan's brother, a teacher at an elite public school in New York, has protested the school's admissions process because...

Decades after Congress passed an anti-discrimination law ensuring that pregnant employees "shall be treated the same" as other workers, the Supreme Court struggled Wednesday with exactly what that federal rule requires.
Some say it means...

In its first case testing the limits of free speech on social media, the Supreme Court showed little interest Monday in extending new protections to people who post messages threatening to kill or hurt others.
The justices sharply questioned the lawyer...

WASHINGTON — In its first case testing the limits of free speech on social media, the Supreme Court showed little interest Monday in extending new protections to people who post messages threatening to kill or hurt others.
The justices sharply questioned...

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is reportedly doing fine after a procedure Wednesday to implant a stent in her right coronary artery. But this health scare is sure to revive the debate about whether the 81-year-old leader of the court’s...

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who vowed this year to stay on the Supreme Court as long as she could go “full steam,” announced Wednesday she had undergone a “coronary catheterization procedure” to have a stent put in her right coronary artery.
Ginsburg,...

The window for President Obama to add another liberal justice to the Supreme Court probably closed last week when Republicans took control of the Senate.
Over the last 10 years, the Senate's vote on high court nominees has increasingly followed party...

It seems safe to say that when the U.S. Supreme Court heard Barnes v. Glen Theatre in 1991, it couldn't have foreseen the rampant hilarity, intellectual heft and kinetic amazement of "Arguendo," now at REDCAT through Sunday.
By applying the...

Comedian Carol Burnett is working on a book about her television show, she told Rosie O'Donnell before an audience at the 92nd Street Y in New York. The Wall Street Journal reports that Burnett "is writing liner notes about various sketches she...

Judicial dissents often make for the most important, interesting and entertaining reading in major cases.
Now comes Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, bidding to take her place next to great dissenters Supreme...

With only a few days left before election day, pretexts for panic over the sanctity of the ballot box are dwindling down to a precious few. Two political scientists from Virginia's Old Dominion University have done their part, with an article on the...

Easy for them to say, since they’re already on the Supreme Court, but three justices agreed the other day that the court isn’t diverse enough. In a forum at their alma mater, Yale Law School, Clarence Thomas, Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said...

In allowing Texas' voter identification law to go into effect, at least for the November election, the U.S. Supreme Court last week showed the nation precisely what it meant in 2013 when its conservatives struck down the heart of the Voting Rights Act...